I'd love to play a more metroid-style Mega Man X game, with armor pods acting as save points, weapon energy replacing missiles, dash for speed boost, ride armor able to be used in most areas for terrain traversal and modification....you guys get the idea. I do realize it'd basically just be metroid with a blue male samus, but hey, it sounds cool in my head.

As for that FPS X that will never happen, my only dislike about it looking at it was the silly disarming opponents. The rapid fire buster looked cool, the overall look was sleek, you could easily see the armor integration in weapon variations and movement upgrades like sprinting and double jumping. Honestly, it'd probably be similar to metroid prime as well, but this isn't really a negative.

All this mega talk is making me wanna go back to an old X game or maybe legends. God this series had some real shiners.

You still have some people swearing it was shit if ScrewAttack's any indication.

I was mainly disappointed at the time it wasn't traditional Mega Man but in 3D, instead it was sort of a Mega Man-esque 3D Metroid, which I liked for it was more and more as time went on.

Sorta what happened to me as well. I ended up getting it shortly after it came out (along with FFT), initially was disappointed it wasn't MMX5 (although X4 wasn't lighting my Fire Man due to the clunkiness of the PSX engine and the noticeable sequel slide, but I digress), then I started to realize that it was the closest thing we were getting to a 3D Metroid conversion (until Prime came out). Then MML2 came out and won me over almost completely with the variety MML1 sorely lacked.

I'll be honest, when I first played MML back in the day, I couldn't wrap my head around the fact that it was a Mega Man game. I thought that Mega Man HAD to be what I thought it had always been for me--about X and the reploids and mavericks and all that.

I was a dumb kid.

I like MML. I replayed it years later and finally got the game. But at the same time, I felt that the charm of the series really didn't run off the traditional Mega Man vibe. It could have easily been its own franchise. It's kind of sad that companies like Nintendo, Capcom, etc have to shoehorn these existing franchises onto new ideas. Over time, they have fostered fanbases that simply don't support new IPs as much as they could have.

I'm glad some developers are getting more recognition instead of just their games. The industry needs to move in that direction instead, kind of like how we see a director's name attached to a film and have certain expectations, even if the genre is completely different. You can kind of count on a movie to be good if the people behind it are reputable. I know the industries are two different beasts. It would just be nice to have developers and publishers not be afraid to branch out more, AND to have the fans to support such efforts.